The Hand of Ra

Brother Tal struggled with the HE-Vs controls as he neared the crest of the steep ridge. The machine's wide feet, caked with mud, settled at last onto the ancient stone, stable. He locked the Klondike’s joints, a pneumatic hiss reaching him in the cockpit. Tal glanced at the cockpit displays, amber tones shifted yellow by the high afternoon sun. Ra, ever above, ever kind. There was no grand view through the canopy; all he could see from where he sat was scrubby grasses, gravel, and a few sparse saplings. 

The eastern edge of the Buried Basin, Ra's earthly domain set aside for his blessed people, was just past the ridge. Tal would see it with his own eyes in a moment. Despite the approaching threat, now was the time for patience. He knew the sentries were picking their way over the same rough ridge to meet him. Tal leaned back and savored a moment’s respite. His machine, an old, repurposed ore-mover, like himself bore signs of devotion: coarse copper and brass filigree wound along the arms, a brass sun welded to the wide chest, and everywhere else a wash of dark burgundy paint covered the rusting hull. That paint symbolized Ra's continual protection of his people, and his wrath toward those who would harm them. One and the same. 

The dashboard chirped, a blindspot alarm. Beyond the scuffed canopy’s edge, two men approached. Three remote, weak clangs reverberated up through the HE-V; the signal. Tal checked the joint locks one more time, then unbuckled, rose from the seat, and turned to the back of the cockpit. He touched the devotional sun there, inscribed with its wide, unblinking eye, and then climbed the short ladder to the Klondike’s top hatch. He threw the locking lever, and pushed the heavy hatch up and open with the aid of its struts. Pine, hot metal, soil, wet stone and a twinge of sweat reached his nose.

Brother Ostlund had already scaled the tall machine via its handholds and was waiting for him. He helped heave back the heavy hatch and lent a hand to Tal, grunting with the effort of pulling his stocky friend up and out. 

“Brother Ostlund, be seen. Punctual as ever. Thank you.”

“Ra sees you also, Brother Tal. You’re welcome. I wish I could greet you on a happier day.” The taller man unslung a pair of electro-optical binoculars and handed them to Tal. He pointed east. From their vantage on top of the Klondike they could see over the ridge and clear to the distant horizon.

Tal raised the binoculars, fiddled with the magnification, and waited for them to focus. Some 15 miles off, dust plumes on the horizon, a dun snake winding through the hazy countryside. Tal punched up the magnification to max and his view wobbled precipitously, too much for the bino’s stabilizers to overcome. He knelt, settling one elbow on a knee, and looked again. He caught glimpses of blue paint through the dust. 

"Ah," Tal said quietly. "It's them." He lowered the heavy binos and made a tsk sound, between regret and disappointment.

“Who?” 

“The ones from the south. Two months ago, near abouts.”

“The blasphemers! Closed eyes, stony hearts. They have chosen war, then.”

“Looks like, dear brother.”

Tal stood and turned back, looking inward and toward home. From where he stood he could just make out the hallowed ground of the Three Rebukes. He did not need the binoculars to visualize every detail of that holy place, the one Watcher Lynch always recounted so beautifully in his services. Three overlapping craters, each a perfect circle of tortured, shattered earth some two hundred meters across. The edge of each fused to glass by the pure fury of Ra's judgment. Tal had walked them as a boy, walked them still, and could feel the crunch and unnatural smoothness underfoot even now. The Founder of the Hand of Ra, the First Seen, had beseeched Ra in his time of uttermost need. Ra had answered, and saved his people. Three brilliant lances of sunlight made solid streaked down from the sky. Three roars of anger shook the Earth. Three craters where the wicked had dared the Sun God. 

Three Rebukes.

—

Brother Tal had watched their faces during the negotiations. They were desperate, tired people. Their leader, a man named Verlan, had been respectful enough regarding the acquisition of nickel and copper. His people needed both for repair of water reclamation systems. Left broken, it was sure to doom their struggling settlement. Clean water was of paramount importance for trade with neighbors and travellers. Verlan had offered much for the metals; weapons, labor, expertise. Then his wicked tongue uncoiled.

Verlan had argued too strongly during a time of scarcity. Elder William tried to placate him with assurances that Ra would provide enough for both peoples, enough for Verlan and his folk, in time. Verlan had scoffed, then blasphemed, laughing.

Negotiations ended at once and they were sent away under threat, and twice more since then their envoys were turned back. With such people there could be no trade, no fraternity.

—

"They were warned," Tal said as he turned east again. His voice was neutral. "They chose their words."

Ostlund did not reply, turning to spit as if his mouth were suddenly filled with rust.

"Remain here, on watch. I will send others to relieve you. Ra sees our plight, brother.” Tal said

Ostlund climbed down off the towering Klondike with the agility of a spider. Tal reentered the cockpit and strapped in. He called home, alerting the Elders, and carefully turned his hulking machine around. He steered the massive HE-V down the ridge, its gait jarring and ponderous. By the time he reached the bottom, Watcher Lynch was ringing the great chimes to gather the faithful. On level ground, Tal set a fast pace. The nearest rim of the Three Rebukes caught the afternoon sun, glinting like the eye of Ra himself.

—

The Temple of the Seeing Sun was part of a vast smelting works and refinery before the Rift. While the many vats were still functional and indeed used by the Hand for their original purpose, the sanctuary, originally an immense furnace of some kind, had forever been cold. Now the cavernous, echoing space served the Hand of Ra as a place of worship. On the high ceiling was a brilliant sun of gold, the Eye of Ra, and surrounding it were small points of copper, stars symbolizing his lesser light. The air here always smelled of herbs, charcoal, smoke and beeswax, a wonderfully comforting aroma to Tal and his kin.

Watcher Lynch stood before the granite altar, the cold stone draped in an embroidered crimson cloth. His copper circlet glinted in the firelight as he raised his hands and the seated congregation hushed. Lynch’s face was deeply tanned and creased, weathered by sixty-odd years of ascetic devotion and survival. Around him, dozens of Ra’s faithful had assembled: Tal’s fellow Brothers and Sisters, the warriors who protected Ra’s domain on Earth, along with miners, artisans, whole families. Tal took his place at the front, shivering in his sweat-dampened haptic suit.

"Ra sees all, be seen you who would." Lynch intoned solemnly, voice strong and sonorous despite his years. 

“See us, see us.” A chorus of voices, hands raised and fingers touching, circles, overhead in unison. 

Watcher Lynch continued. "From his high place, Ra watches over his faithful. He watched over our ancestors when he first set his ire against the world. He watches us now. My own father was only eight years old when the First Seen saved him," Lynch said softly. "Him and sixteen other children, hiding as the heathens railed against Ra’s correction. The First Seen, our Founder, was once only a simple soldier. So moved was he by pure pity for the defenseless that Ra saw him, and revealed his benevolence to him.”

"The Founder, blessed be his memory, was led to an old school bus, as yellow as Ra’s light. A sign of favor and protection. He gathered the children and brought them here, to this basin, to safety. There, in time, Ra further revealed his goodness and his ways. Ra had called upon his First Seen to save us all, to build something good on the Earth he cursed. Every night, the Founder told my father and the others stories about the Sun God, happy, kind, watching them from above. They learned of Ra’s great Eye that never blinked. About the certain wrath that would fall on any who dared threaten his faithful."

Tal had heard this very sermon countless hundreds of times, and still he listened intently. 

“Then, one day, Ra tested his chosen. Evil men came," he leaned on the altar, eyes downcast, hands tense. "The Founder begged them to leave. They laughed at him, they said they would take what they wanted and burn the rest."

Lynch looked up, his voice trembling with indignation. "The Founder walked out alone in another machine Ra provided for him. Ever peaceful, he begged again that the evil men should leave so that Ra might spare them. They would not go. Then, he prayed to Ra, and Ra heard his prayers! Ra then sent down his Three Rebukes..." Only the crackle of burning firewood was audible in the Temple. 

"That was when the children truly understood," Lynch went on, voice softer, full of reverence. "The Founder’s word was true. Ra watched over them. Ra protects, as he always has! He watches over and protects us still! Be seen!"

Watcher Lynch stood tall behind the altar and raised his arms, voluminous sleeves shimmering like oil in the torchlight. "Two months past, evil men came again, seeking trade. We faithful welcomed these strangers. We offered fair terms for our minerals, minerals bequeathed to us by Ra for our provision. But they were greedy. They mocked Ra’s wisdom. Their leader called us fools clinging to insanity!"

Murmurs rippled through the crowd, hissing with anger, disturbed.

"They blasphemed," Lynch said coldly. " And now they return with weapons, showing themselves as the thieves they are. They would steal what Ra has blessed his chosen with. And so they too will face judgment, as all who threaten Ra and his chosen must." He half turned and gestured to Tal.

“The Brothers and Sisters go forth bravely to confront these pillagers, and Ra’s ever-open eye burns hot against our foes! Be seen, you faithful!”

“SEE US!” The crowd erupted in jubilation as Tal and his fellow warriors stood.

—

Brother Tal monitored the approach of the raiders all night in the command center, a room little more than a converted office space fitted with a map board and radios. The approaching band had camped some distance off, resuming their journey the following morning as Ra’s eye rose behind them. A good omen. 

Tal departed with his fellows in their own HE-Vs to meet them. Four in all, along with mining trucks carrying heavy weapons and brethren who would fight on foot. They would meet two other Hand pilots already afield and watching. The weight of what was to come settled over Tal like mist, and his heart was troubled.

He had long ago memorized the prayers of salvation, every variation of the holy numbers, and repeated them, under duress, during drill and practice until he could not speak them wrong. But he had never done so with his heart ablaze, in battle, had never sent up his prayer with the real fervor that would bring Ra's burning judgment upon living souls. 

The Hand’s meager force stopped south of the Three Rebukes and awaited their foes. In time, their foes arrived, rolling and walking over the ridge in the distance, stopping at the bottom across a broad plain, roughly a kilometer away. Brother Tal stoically observed it all from his Klondike, a lengthy flanged club gripped in his rig’s right hand. He was positioned with the five other Hand HE-Vs, all variously ornamented, in a simple defensive gunline blocking the most direct route to the village. 

The calculus of the battle to come was brutal: six against fourteen, and among the raider ranks were actual warmachines and many more vehicles, besides. Without Ra's intervention, this would be a slaughter.

Tal opened a general channel. "You there. You were warned. Again you stand in Ra's domain, in opposition to his Hand. Withdraw now, I beg, or you will face judgment."

A response came right after, a man’s familiar voice. Verlan, their leader. 

"Sir, we came in peace. We came in friendship. We offered fair trade. You refused over- over jest, a joke.” His voice was even wearier, not truly angry. "Our children may die because of your-.” He cut himself off. “We need the metals we talked about, and that’s all. We're not here to destroy you. That is the last thing we want. Can we not… Can we figure this out peacefully?"

"Your blasphemies are counted," Tal replied harshly. "You called Ra a false god. You called his faithful lunatics."

Across the plain, Tal could not hear the many whirring motors and servos that aimed guns, nor the silent cogitation of fire control systems fuzing shells and charging capacitors. None of the Hand’s HE-Vs, simple as they were, sounded alarms at the questing attention of hostile targeting lasers and radars.

"I only questioned- I sought to understand. I meant no offense, no harm. Please! Please…” 

"Leave," Tal repeated. "I will not say it again." He struggled against a rising hatred for these people. He sought to channel the Founder’s mercy and compassion.

Silence stretched for too long. Then Verlan’s voice returned, harder. "We can't. I'm sorry, but we can't.” 

Their formation advanced as one across the plain. No shots were fired.

Tal watched them come. His hand moved again to the transmission key. "Sister Casie, we must beseech Ra for deliverance." He rattled off a lengthy, sacred numeric prayer, and another after that, owing to the great peril he and his kin faced. The numbers’ purpose was knowable only to Ra.

They chose this, they blasphemed. Tal reminded himself. They were warned. They blasphemed and now they come as thieves. Against Ra.

—

Deep in the innermost sanctum of the Temple of the Seeing Sun, beyond even the sacred reliquary shrine of the Founder's bus, Sister Casie, robed, sat in the Founder's own HE-V. It was merely half an HE-V, at this point. One leg was gone, the other was stripped to the skeleton. Neglect, rust and wear had locked every joint. The paint was so old and brittle it flaked like cicada husks, crackling at the slightest touch. 

In the dim cockpit, cramped and cluttered, she waited, anointed for a most holy and important duty: serving as the bridge between the protectors’ lips and Ra’s ears. She heard her brother’s prayers, committing the numbers of both to memory in an instant. Her hands trembled slightly as she punched the numbers in, and watched them populate a display. Two prayers, two sequences each: a string of numbers that would call Ra's judgment. She pressed a single, larger key and waited 

"Sister Casie?" Brother Tal's voice crackled, insistent, over the radio. "Have you heard? Does Ra see us? Has he heard us?"

She’d been distracted by her own troubled thoughts and blinked back to the present, focusing on the screen, still dark save for three green, winking dots. Soon, a cheery tone sounded as an image of a dish, on Earth, pointed at a satellite in the void, above, appeared. A checkmark glowed between them, then all vanished. 

"Yes, Brother Tal. Ra has heard us, has seen us. Even now his light gathers." Her voice sounded steadier, surer, than she felt and she was glad of it. 

—

Far above the Sudbury Basin, a forgotten satellite waited among the ever-multiplying constellation of junk in orbit over Earth. Decaying and decrepit though it was, it had been built to last. Unusual for commercial satellites, this one carried a tremendously heavy load of cargo meant for delivery to the surface: sleek, pointed kinetic mass rods, made of cheap and abundant tungsten, each a little shorter than a power pole and about as wide. 

In its day a product of graft and blackmail, the satellite was once used to break up deep formations of ore throughout the Basin, doing so easily, quickly and cheaply. When the Rift struck, it was forgotten about soon enough. It waited, geosynchronous, patient and potent, until a kindly, desperate man happened upon a still-functioning, credentialed controller in a tucked-away HE-V.

Once again, coordinates were received. Twice the hopper revolved silently. Though it operated with feline smoothness once upon a time, it now hitched and scraped through the deployment procedure. Twice, two gray spikes puffed away from the launch bay, one after the other. They seemed to fall slowly, at first.

—

Brother Tal tried to count the seconds, seemingly stretched into minutes, stretched into hours. His mouth was dry. Onward their foes marched. Was something wrong? Tal strangled the doubt at once. Ra was watching. Ra protected.

The oncoming raiders were halfway across the plain, still holding fire. Hesitant, perhaps, or hoping against hope that the faithful would break or surrender. Tal knew that Ra’s gaze, ever heavy on the hearts of the wicked, stayed their lust for bloodshed. Proof!

It was then that he looked up again, and this time saw. Two tiny, thin, bright streaks in the sky. The signs! Drops of the sun’s unquenchable fire, Ra’s might made manifest! Stretching, angling down from on high, their speed impossible and gathering. Tal had heard the stories, had touched the very soil of the Strikes, but knowing was not the same as seeing. They grew and grew, lengthening, ever brighter. Ra, reaching out to smite the evildoers! Time compressed now. Years squeezed to a fraction of a second.

The faithful would be preserved!

The first tungsten rod struck. Its impact was apocalyptic. One blue-and-white checkered HE-V was beneath it at the impact point. It ceased to exist, smashed to its constituent atoms by incalculable force. Unseen, the rod burrowed into the earth instantly, a shockfront of displaced, superheated stone and soil screaming outward. A perfect circle, a scouring hurricane. The ground leapt, heaved and rolled, as waves on the sea. Another HE-V near ground zero was thrown skyward, arms outstretched, upward, in a facsimile of supplication, before disappearing in the rising cloud.

The second rod fell. More HE-Vs tumbled like bowling pins. Trucks flipped or sank in the now-treacherous earth. In another moment, all was concealed by dust. The shockwave reached Tal and his brethren. Even some five hundred meters distant the mighty Klondike was rocked by the pressure wave, and he had to work to keep the top-heavy machine from tilting over backwards. Over the radio, awestruck prayers of thanks, of glory, of praise from his brothers and sisters filled the channels. Singing, too.

Tal ordered them to stand, to hold position. They all waited some time. Still no shots came. As the dust and smoke slowly cleared, the faithful saw: where a moment ago stood their enemies, now was only ruin. One HE-V, battered and prone, struggled to flip onto its back. It managed, and was still for a moment. Then one giant steel hand reached up and tore away its canopy, dropping it to the smoldering soil before going slack. A man slowly crawled out from the cockpit, as if from a tomb. Two men and a woman, all injured, tried vainly to force open another shredded machine before flames engulfed it.

Tal and the others stood and watched. They watched the few survivors go, as ghosts, back the way they came. Those spared among the defeated who had dared challenge Ra. Later, one survivor, a young man pinned in the wreckage of a transport truck, leg crushed beyond saving, was found weeping. Weeping not from the agony that was certainly terrible, but from revelation. 

—

The victory convocation lasted hours, the Hand of Ra gathered in their entirety inside the Temple. Watcher Lynch led the ceremonies. Hymns were sung and thanks offered. Sister Casie slipped away, walking through the twisting innards of the complex to the old bus in its shrine. Its wheels sat on carved stone blocks, tires long ago rotted to nothing. Surrounding it, the faithful had placed their simple votive offerings: bowls of soil from the Three Rebukes and the new Strikes, written prayers on paper, sketches of loved and lost, simple candles.

Casie knelt and studied some of them. A child's drawing of the sun, a hand-beaten copper prayer wheel. A long letter, written in unsteady script, thanking Ra for another year of life.

These people, her people, believed. Truly, deeply believed. Faith, the kind that gives purpose, structure, and hope. That made sense of a deeply confusing world. She had been anointed to fortify that faith, to serve as the sacred link between earthly followers and Ra above. She rose and considered the driver's seat inside the bus, barely visible through the cloudy, grimy windows, where the Founder had sat. 

She glanced at the small shrine box installed beside the seat containing a picture of the Founder from life, faded and tattered. A man in camouflage, with hard bark but kind eyes. His smile was thin, tired. Had he truly prophesied this faith, their faith? Or was it half-remembered myth meant only to comfort frightened children? Did he believe his own tales? Did it matter?

Casie closed her eyes to pray. The whispered words fizzled out and she was silent; doubt had fully risen to cover her heart, and no words escaped those murky, black waters. The Founder was a kind man. But merely a man who’d had enough of war and decided to protect orphans instead. A man who then told those orphans stories to comfort them. Had he known of the mining satellite beforehand? Had he discovered it by accident, sheltering in this abandoned mine? 

Casie walked closer to the bus and pressed a hand to the cool, rough bodywork. There was too much at stake, too many lives. She would keep the faith, for their sake. But she understood it could not, would not, last. The satellite, unreachable, was slowly failing. And its payload depleted with each called strike. 

How many rods remained? A dozen? Five? Two? None? Casie wondered if Ra’s judgment would even fall at all next time.

She pulled her hand back and touched the sun medallion at her throat, the copper surface warm from her skin. She felt suddenly trapped, panting, walls closing in, shadows whispering of the destructive enlightenment sure to befall one and all in the Buried Basin. She gathered herself after a time and walked back into the Temple to join the festivities. Her tears would be mistaken for those of joy.

Illustration by Florian Mellies